Lenore Skomal: No patience for hospital life

Lenore Skomal

March 14, 2013 12:01 AM

Lenore Skomal

March 14, 2013 12:01 AM

No stranger to caring for those with long-term illnesses, I've logged plenty of hours inside hospitals. Maybe I'm a freak of nature, but I like them -- as long as I'm not the one in the bed. But then again, I like going to the dentist, too.

Thankfully, the six days I spent there recently had nothing to do with illness. I merely played the role of companion and nightstand during my husband's rehabilitation from double knee replacement.

Mind you, it's been years since I've pulled 12-hour shifts in a hospital, and while much is exactly the same, one major aspect has changed. It appears that they've undergone the same shift in behavior expectation as libraries. Both institutions have loosened up a lot, almost abandoning their rule of hushed quietude.

The medical staff makes no pretense that life inside those vanilla and mint walls mirrors the cloistered halls of monks. With that pretense dropped, you might worry as I did, "Uh-oh." Gone are the days when you had to whisper, churchlike, upon entering a patient's room. Bellicose greetings seem the norm: the louder, the better.

I spent a lot of time sitting in my pale blue Naugahyde chair as my husband snored in a drug-induced sleep, interrupted every 45 minutes by a nurse to check vitals. No need to eavesdrop on the robust discussions of other visitors and patients. I could hear them clear as glass. I even got some much-needed guidance when the local priest encouraged someone right outside my door. The best was the off-key Clint Black wannabe serenading his sweetie with his acoustic guitar across the hall.

My marathon viewing of "Downton Abbey" was interrupted without fail every 60 seconds by the painful siren of an oxygen monitor attached to my husband to ensure he didn't stop breathing. He never did, but I did every time it went off.

By the time he was transferred to the rehabilitation facility, he was exhausted. Disconnected from the machinery and weaned off most of his meds, he'd finally be able to get some shut-eye. But after a fitful night listening to the woman across the hall wail to be taken home, he changed his plan and decided to nap most of the daylight hours to catch up.

Think again, Kemosabe. As the charge nurse told him cheerfully at 4:30 the next morning while she got him dressed, "You're not here to rest. You're here to work."

So given all of this, I ask you: What exactly is the point behind a "hospital zone"?